After weeks of stalled budget negotiations, legislative leaders seem more and more likely to find an alternative to a Constitutional Budget Reserve draw, which requires some votes of the House minority and associated add-backs to the operating budget.

But the minority said in a Wednesday news conference that it worries a draw from the Permanent Fund earnings reserve — one of the options available to the majority to circumvent a CBR vote — could hurt Alaskans’ Permanent Fund Dividend checks.

Juneau’s usual rain showers feel like a thing of the distant past, but the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Juneau is asking boaters to remember that while the weather is warm, the water isn’t.

In the middle of National Boating Safety Week, members of the local Coast Guard station staged a test response boat run. While cruise ships docked and float planes landed Tuesday morning in Gastineau Harbor, members of the Coast Guard threw out flotation devices to an invisible man overboard.

Juneau’s minority legislators have been resisting a move of the special session to a location outside the capital city. But, with Gov. Bill Walker deciding not to stick to his guns in hopes of a quicker operating budget decision, it seems local lawmakers will be forced to take the show on the road.

The House and Senate are scheduled to convene in Anchorage on Thursday.

After more than a year of legal back-and-forth, the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly shot down an appeal of a planning commission decision allowing a transitional housing facility for women.

With Haven House transitional housing’s history fraught with emotional public meetings and neighborhood infighting, the unanimous Monday night decision of the Assembly came as an anticlimactic end to a long process.

But that’s just fine with Haven House director Kara Nelson. She said Monday night getting the Assembly’s final word on the drawn-out appeal feels “awesome, amazing.”

If the Alaska Legislature continues to stall on passing a fully funded state operating budget, 15,000 of about 16,000 state employees will be sent layoff notices in preparation for a partial government shutdown, Gov. Bill Walker announced Monday afternoon.

With snow-capped mountains vividly reflected in the huge windows behind him, outgoing University of Alaska Southeast Chancellor John Pugh led the charge Saturday in dedicating the school’s year-old freshman residence hall, a construction project that took less than a year to build but about half a decade to plan.

Every one of the nine new U.S. citizens naturalized in a Friday ceremony at the Juneau Federal Building had an emotional story to tell. They shared their journeys and their dreams, which many said were finally coming true because of the oath of dedication they gave to the United States that day.

For Ljubomir “LJ” Medenica, born in the former Yugoslavia, the emotions were multifold.

Beautiful weather this week means a hustle and bustle around the popular Perseverance trailhead. But if you try to stop by the Last Chance Mining Museum on your hiking outing, you’ll find yourself up a creek without a bridge.

The decades-old wooden footbridge that visitors to the mining museum must cross is finally getting the attention it’s needed for a long time — volunteers from the Kensington gold mine knocked out the rotting half of the bridge Wednesday and were working Thursday to replace it with a new one.

In a minutes-long meeting Thursday afternoon, a House Finance committee co-chair announced the Republican-led group is blocking Gov. Bill Walker’s Medicaid expansion bill from continuing through the legislative process this year.

The announcement came after several committee hearings on Medicaid in Anchorage over the past few days.